


Ugly Neon Lights

by melwil



Category: West Wing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 20:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/180967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melwil/pseuds/melwil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We've been tainted by the nonsense of history, and the stain has been sucked into the marrow of our bones." Toby pours his heart out. Pre-Bartlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ugly Neon Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2002

I hate the way the lights buzz. Ugly neon lights, and they're buzzing right above my head. They're buzzing and they hurt my head and it's just one of the things that doesn't make sense anymore. There are a lot of things that don't make sense. I suppose I always knew that.

It seems ridiculous to care about a buzzing light. I should be moping over other things, the real things. Global warming, Republican control of the house, the way no one wants to hire me any more, my failing marriage. But the glass in front of my is only half empty, and there's a whole night left to mope about important things. Right now, I am concerned about the light.

It wouldn't be a hard thing to change, a light. I'm sitting in a respectable bar, not some run down honky tonk. They should be able to change a light bulb. A light bulb is temporary, barely a blip in the greater scheme of things. How many liberals does it take to change a light bulb? One, the world revolves around them. How many conservatives does it take to change a light bulb? I suppose it depends how many conservatives it took to shoot it down. There's usually a better punch line than that, but I don't seem to remember it.

The point of this ramble is that it's quite easy to change a light bulb. It's not easy to change a marriage.

I'm not sure where that came from. I'm sorry, I didn't intend to talk about my marriage until I'd had more to drink. There's still a quarter glass of scotch sitting in front of me. I'm pretty sure it's still my first glass. Sometimes I forget to count how many glasses I've had, and then people tell me that I'm drunk. So I drink without my friends these days. That's not difficult, so many people abandoned me first. Like Andi.

Well, she hasn't really left me yet. She's threatened to, she's packed her bags and stacked them next to the door. One of these days the door will slam, and she will be gone. I don't doubt that it will happen. In all reality it has to happen, it'll be for the best.

Do you know Andi? You may have seen her on TV? She's amazing, all firecrackers and star shine. I used to write poetry about her when I first met her. She was a friend of my younger brother, and she would tease him, and when she got to know me, she would tease me as well. Then she went to a school across the country, and I went to law school, and I forgot that she even existed. She rang me up when I was working on my first campaign. We used to hold hands in movies.

As I said, she's on TV a lot at the moment. She's thinking about running for congress. I said I would help her, help write for her campaign. She laughed, and refused my offer. She didn't want to hurt her chances before she started.

I make her sound so horrible when I say that. She's not, she's just smart. She's smarter than me, and we know it. Some of those things you just understand. She refused my offer because she wants to win. And I want her to win, so I don't make a fuss about it all. So now I've told you all this, and there's no scotch in my glass, and I'm going to have to get another one. Neat, no ice. I want it to burn.

Things don't make sense. This I realise, I know. Most of my lifetime has been spent in a continuous stream of nonsense. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination. Lyndon B. Johnson, the Vietnam War. Nixon and Watergate, Carter and Ford. Ronald Reagan and the weirdness of the eighties. Nothing about any of that was understandable. Nothing about any of us is understandable. We've been tainted by the nonsense of history, and the stain has been sucked into the marrow of our bones.

The light still buzzes above me, and there's still scotch in my glass. It's a heavy glass, so different to those cheap glasses I used to drink from. When we were students we scavenged our glasses from any possible location. One of my friends was a busboy at a diner, and he's steal cups and plates and cutlery for me. We used to spend hours trying to get them clean.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, which is why no political candidate is ever going to end up campaigning in a halo. We have a hard enough time hiding their horns. It doesn't matter how many times that we tell the public that they have clean records, there's always some reporter, or some opponent who is going to find a smidgen of dirt. If they can't find, they'll plant it. It's the American way.

I'm sorry, I never intended to rant and rave this way. There's a pretty girl behind the bar, and she's staring at me. I suppose she thinks that I'm a vagrant, or a drunk. I'm not, you've got to understand that. I'm just a man trying to forget about the fights with his wife. I'm just a political adviser who has run out of honest men to represent.

Who am I kidding? Not myself, anyway. There never was an honest politician, they've been corrupt since the days of Solon and Cleisthanes. You need some deceit, the people don't want to know everything. The truth is to bland, and confusing. The Wizard of Oz wasn't half as interesting when he stepped out from behind the curtain.

Sometime I'll have to stop drinking. Sometime I'll have to go home to have a fight with Andi. Sometime she's going to slam that door on my, and neither of us will be able to open it again. Soon I'll probably pack a bag, a light one, just clothes and blank notebooks, and the pen my father gave me when I graduated from high school. Soon I'll drive to New Hampshire, hoping that my car will be able to handle the cold. I'll go to New Hampshire, because everyone involved in politics goes to New Hampshire early in an election year.

Maybe I'll find someone who hasn't heard about my losing streak. Maybe I'll end up somewhere where I can forget that Andi doesn't want to love me anymore. But if that doesn't happen, at least I can entertain the idea that the cold will freeze my emotions. And if I freeze, the scotch will warm me up. There's always something to look forward to.


End file.
